I use Preview on OS X and GoodReader on the iPad for reading and annotating pdfs. GoodReader allows me to 'view summary' which is a plain text list of all highlighted sections and comments added to the pdf.

Preview allows you to view annotations in a sidebar but I can't find a way to export them. I really want to create a .txt file of just the pdf's annotations.

Does anyone know of a way of doing this, either with Preview or another app whose annotations can be viewed on GoodReader and vice versa?

5 Answers
5

I'll second that answer. I'm doing the same with PDF Expert instead of GoodReader. It is really important that you do the conversion in Skim on a COPY of the original PDF, as otherwise the PDF expert (or GoodReader, I assume) will lose the annotations, once converted (e.g., if you have your PDFs in Dropbox, which you then open either on the iPad or Mac). There is a slightly more elegant solution though. It's trivial but it avoids making a copy of the PDF:

Open the annotated PDF in Skim, convert to Skim notes, export notes to text or RTF, an then close Skim without saving. Your original PDF with notes will stay unconverted (and thus still annotated for GoodReader), but you will have your notes and highlights exported and saved.

Annotate with Preview or GoodReader. On the iPad, GoodReader can extract the text of annotations, when you select 'view summary'. This summary can be saved as a txt file.

[Update: GoodReader seems to have removed 'view summary' in .txt format for some unfathomable reason. A workaround (at least for me) is to use the free service, Send to DropBox. You simply select 'email summary', and the annotations appear in a email message. Send this to your Send to DropBox mail address, and you have a .txt file with your annotations. In may ways, if you use DropBox, this is easier because it cuts out the step of uploading the .txt]

On OS X, I've downloaded Skim. I can open an copy of a pdf annotated in Preview or GoodReader, then convert the annotations to .skim format by selecting file>convert notes. Having done this, I can select file>export and there's an option to export notes as a txt file.

If anyone can come up with a more elegant solution, I'd be very interested to hear it.

There is a really simple yet robust online tool for extracting highlights and notes from your PDF files available at: sumnotes.

Not only does it support various advanced features like selective extraction or predictive extraction, it also allows you to save extracted highlights into TXT or DOC files. It supports all browsers and operating systems and does not need any installation. It's free, too.

We're looking for long answers that provide some explanation and context. Don't just give a one-line answer; explain why your answer is right, ideally with citations. Answers that don't include explanations may be removed.

1

This somehow doesn't really fit the question but it might just need some additional explanations. Can you please expand your answer a bit?
–
patrix♦Mar 27 '13 at 12:08